PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Alon Orlitsky

Alon Orlitsky is a UC San Diego information theorist whose research spans information theory, machine learning, probability estimation, communication, compression and speech recognition. He earned bachelor's degrees in mathematics and electrical engineering at Ben-Gurion University and an electrical engineering doctorate at Stanford, then worked at Bell Labs before joining UC San Diego. He and Ananda Suresh won a NIPS Best Paper award for their Good-Turing probability-estimation work in 2015, and Orlitsky served as a visiting scientist and program organizer for the Simons Institute's Information Theory program. A 2017 ICML honorable mention recognized his work on estimating symmetric properties of discrete distributions; he received the IEEE Information Theory Society's Shannon Award in 2021. As of October 2026, he is an electrical and computer engineering professor at UC San Diego, holds the Qualcomm Chair and directs two research centers while serving on the IEEE Information Theory Society's Shannon Award Selection Committee.

Born
1958
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Links
Website

Years link to their sources.

Timeline

  1. 1980–1986

    Degrees in mathematics and engineering

    He earns B.Sc. degrees in mathematics and electrical engineering from Ben-Gurion University in 1980 and 1981, then completes a Ph.D. in electrical engineering at Stanford University in 1986.

  2. 1986–1997

    Bell Labs to UC San Diego

    From 1986 to 1996, he works as a member of technical staff at AT&T Bell Laboratories' Mathematical Sciences Research Center. From 1996 to 1997, he works as a quantitative analyst at D.E. Shaw and joins UC San Diego in 1997.

  3. 2006

    A universal compression award

    He shares the IEEE Information Theory Society Paper Award in 2006 with Narayana Prasad Santhanam and Junan Zhang for their 2004 paper, “Universal Compression of Memoryless Sources Over Unknown Alphabets.”

  4. 2015

    Good-Turing wins a NIPS award

    At NIPS 2015, he and Ananda Suresh win a Best Paper award for “Competitive Distribution Estimation: Why is Good-Turing Good.” Their estimators perform nearly as well as methods designed with prior knowledge of each distribution.

  5. 2015

    Visiting scientist at Simons

    In spring 2015, he serves as a visiting scientist and program organizer for the Simons Institute's Information Theory program.

  6. 2017

    An ICML honorable mention

    At ICML 2017, he and Jayadev Acharya, Hirakendu Das and Ananda Suresh earn an honorable mention for a method that uses profile maximum likelihood to estimate symmetric properties of discrete distributions.

  7. 2021

    The Shannon Award

    He receives the IEEE Claude E. Shannon Award in 2021.

  8. As of October 2026

    Professor and IEEE committee member

    As of October 2026, he is a professor of electrical and computer engineering at UC San Diego, holds the Qualcomm Chair for Information Theory and Applications, and directs the Center for Wireless Communications and the Information Theory and Applications Center. From 2026 through 2027, he serves on the IEEE Information Theory Society's Claude E. Shannon Award Selection Committee. His research concerns information theory, compression, communication, probability estimation, prediction, machine learning and speech recognition.

Career

  1. Since 1997University of California, San DiegoProfessor of Electrical and Computer Engineering; Qualcomm Chair for Information Theory and Applications
  2. 2015University of California, BerkeleyVisiting Scientist and Program Organizer
  3. 1996–1997D. E. Shaw & Co.Quantitative Analyst
  4. 1986–1996Bell LabsMember of Technical Staff

Education

  1. 1986Stanford UniversityPh.D. in Electrical Engineering
  2. 1981Ben-Gurion University of the NegevB.Sc. degrees in Mathematics and Electrical Engineering

From the biography.

  1. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other universityIncludes Alon Orlitsky. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other university. We compare doctorate and 5+ year employment links, career timing and current workplaces for 187 major-prize and 1,111 best-paper winners.
  2. 23% of people shaping AI who left a university for a company later returned to a universityIncludes Alon Orlitsky. We estimate that 468 of the 2,011 people shaping AI who left a university for a company (23%) later returned to a university after a median of 5 years, and 163 of 829 (20%) made the reverse round trip.
  3. Universities keep AI researchers for a median of 6 years, compared with 2 years at frontier labsIncludes University of California, San Diego. Across 15,811 dated work stays (6,529 people), median role tenure runs from 6 years at universities to 2 years at frontier labs. We compare all five organization types, starting decades from the 1970s to the 2020s, and the organizations that keep people longest.
  4. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labsIncludes University of California, San Diego. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labs. We compare publishing careers, recent citations, dual appointments and job moves across 2,420 university researchers and 308 frontier-lab researchers.

Colleagues

People named in this biography, and people with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

Photo: We have no published photo of Alon Orlitsky yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. Alon Orlitsky | Center for Wireless Communications cwc.ucsd.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  2. IEEE Information Theory Society Honors UC San Diego Engineering Researchers jacobsschool.ucsd.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  3. NIPS 2015 Awards neurips.cc. Checked 21 October 2026.
  4. Competitive Distribution Estimation: Why is Good-Turing Good papers.neurips.cc. Checked 21 October 2026.
  5. Alon Orlitsky simons.berkeley.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  6. ICML 2017 Awards icml.cc. Checked 21 October 2026.
  7. A Unified Maximum Likelihood Approach for Estimating Symmetric Properties of Discrete Distributions | PMLR proceedings.mlr.press. Checked 21 October 2026.
  8. Claude E. Shannon Award | IEEE Information Theory Society itsoc.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  9. Alon Orlitsky | UCSD Profiles profiles.ucsd.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  10. Member profile #8836 | IEEE Information Theory Society itsoc.org. Checked 21 October 2026.